Just Finished Reading: Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

When spinster Elizabeth Philpot is exiled to Lyme Regis with her two sisters she has no idea that such an unwelcome move will prove so momentous. Forced out of their London family home by their elder brother’s marriage they relocate to a small cottage on the English coast. There Elizabeth wanders the expansive beach until she bumps into a local child looking for ‘curies’ to sell to tourists in order to help her family avoid the workhouse. ‘Curies’ are local slang for curiosities – rocks that often look like plants or animals no one has ever seen before. Presumed to be the remains of dead creatures still in existence somewhere in the world they are ignored by many and feared by the few who suspect that they raise more questions than can be safely answered. Elizabeth becomes fascinated with the images of fish etched in rock and begins to collect the best specimens. Helped by the child Mary Anning, who has a particularly good ‘eye’ for finding them, they form a friendship that crosses age and class barriers. It is only when Mary finds what is initially thought to be a crocodile skeleton that their friendship begins to be put to the test. As Mary’s status grows it is Elizabeth who becomes jealous of the attention lavished on her young friend but all of that is put aside when Mary’s reputation is questioned by London’s intellectual elite.

I had never heard of Mary Anning until reading this wonderfully well written novel. It turns out that she (and Miss Philpot) where actual people who made significant contributions to our understanding of our prehistoric past in the years running up to Darwin’s scientific breakthrough. It was Anning who discovered and unearthed several plesiosaurs and ichthyosaur skeletons, the first of their kind ever to be unearthed, which set the academic community on fire and which provided the dynamite evidence which blew young Earth creationism and the literal interpretation of the Bible out of the water. Initially confused by the evidence before their eyes, the dawning realisation that they had stepped into a whole new understanding of the world is seen through the thoughts and actions of the central characters in this book. From grudging acceptance, to wide-eyed astonishment to point-blank refusal to think things through, the complex individuals at the centre of this story exhibit a wide range of reactions to the discoveries at Lyme. Here we are presented with a time and a place on the cusp of revelation. When hillsides collapse to reveal more fossilised bones the whole world as it was known up to that time crumbles with it. At the very centre of it all is an uneducated, poor working class girl with a keen eye and a burning need to put food on the table and coal in the fire. It is only recently, in several books about these events, that the name of Mary Anning is being recognised for her pivotal role in literally unearthing evidence that the story of Genesis was just that, a story and that the Earth is a lot older and has a much more interesting history that anything conceived of in ancient texts. This proved to be a well told story of an exciting and important time in scientific history. Highly recommended.